Monday, July 12, 2010

Quotes: Small Town (8)

Small town 409 "Carol recognized in Washington as she had in California a transplanted and guarded Main Street; two-thirds…had come from Gopher Prairies." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Small town 410 "Always she was to perceive in Washington (as doubtless she would have perceived in New York or London) a thick streak of Main Street." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Small town 426 "In Gopher Prairie the only ardent new topics were Prohibition, the place in Minneapolis where you could get whiskey at thirteen dollars a quart, recipes for home-made beer, the 'high cost of living,' the presidential election, Clark’s new car and not very novel foibles of Cy Bogart …problems were exactly what they had been twenty years ago, and what they would be for twenty years to come." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Small town 438 Mark Schorer, in the Afterword, quoting from the novel: "Under the stilly boughs and the black gauze of dusk the street was meshed in silence…was but the hum of motor tires crunching the road, the creak of a rocker on the Howlands’ porch, the slap of a hand attacking a mosquito, a heat-weary conversation starting and dying, the precise rhythm of crickets, the thud of moths against the screen—sounds that were a distilled silence…a street beyond the end of the world, beyond the boundaries of hope…no one who was interesting would come by…tediousness made tangible, a street builded of lassitude and futility." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Small town vs. cities 413 "Her glimpse of tasks [in Washington] involving millions of people and a score of nations reduced Main Street from bloated importance to its actual pettiness…could never again be quite so awed by the power with which she herself had endowed the Vidas and Blausers and Bogarts." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.